


daughter of none

by iimpavid, voidteatime



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Abuse, Character Study, Gen, Minor Violence, anti-social behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:15:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21541195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidteatime/pseuds/voidteatime
Summary: Min, before she’s a Kanagawa, isn’t exceptional. She isn't anyone.
Kudos: 7





	daughter of none

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Juno Steel and the Portrait of Zarathustra](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22357030) by [voidteatime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidteatime/pseuds/voidteatime). 



> Just a few notes on my interpretation of Min Kanagawa featuring [voidteatime's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidteatime/pseuds/voidteatime) OC, Hieron, who they graciously let me borrow for this illustration.

Min, before she’s a Kanagawa, isn’t exceptional. She isn’t anyone. In fact, she’s a cocktail waitress. Tiny velvet singlet, two-inch skirt, stupid high heels, sparkly choker, the works. It’s a terrible job. She hates it but it requires very little of her in the grand scheme of things and she has tuition to pay so she does it. Working the Diamond Lounge at Jarrah’s casino and pretending she doesn’t mind having cigar smoke blown in her face or getting groped by drunks when she’s working graveyards.

And she’s always been a little strange. 

She had childhood habits like pulling the wings off flies to see how long they’d stay alive after (she kept notes on them) or getting an elementary school teacher who gave her a bad grade in history sent to prison (the things she told her parents and the police don’t bear repeating). She didn’t learn the utility of crying until her teen years. Everyone was always crying over dead pets, strict teachers, dead relatives, being poor. Crying seemed, for the longest time, to be a waste of time-- until she realized just how much time it could shave off getting her way.

So Min -- Min No-Name, Min Nobody, Min Daughter of None-- works a shitty cocktail waitress job and is going to school for business management because that’s the kind of thing she’s good at when she meets Croesus Kanagawa. Or, more accurately, Croesus Kanagawa grabbed her ass at the end of a grueling double shift during finals season and she decided that the _only appropriate recompense_ for his pissing her off was her complete ownership and control of the Kanagawa media conglomerate.

His wife (Min can’t remember or never learned her name) is a necessary sacrifice. His kids are an unfortunate requisite.

* * *

The words coming out of Hieron's mouth stopped making sense somewhere around "discuss ways to amend my contract". They'd done admirably up to that point, showing up at her office in new clothes and pretending to be professional, laughing politely in all the right places without toeing any lines.

Min's ears are ringing.

She circles her desk as they talk. Clearly Croesus hadn’t thought very far ahead when he brought this Plutonian mongrel into the family. They stutter, here and there, after that... but they keep talking, watching their own hands or the middle distance, making some point or other that she simply doesn't care about. They'd blown their entire allowance on _art_ and now here they are in her office wanting to negotiate.

She gets through two circuits before it's just. Too. Much.

Stepping behind Hieron again she snatches a fistful of their hair to slam their face onto the glass desktop and snarls, " _Listen to me you arrogant little shit_!"

Their stupid little glasses pop right off the bridge of their nose.

They push back for a few seconds, flailing, but Min's stronger. She usually is. 

It'll take more than a little jolt to crack the tempered glass-- usually faces lose that fight first in her experience. The one eye of theirs that she can see from this angle (blue ringed with luminous pink, the Technicolor really was getting the best of them) rolls, looking for something to focus on. It reminds her of the look her step-father’s dog had given her just before it died. 

Their hands are still braced on the desktop; they haven't gotten with the program just yet.

At least they've stopped talking.

"Listen to me, Hieron," Min says again in the same reasonable tone she might use to discuss the redistribution of funds between accounts to sponsor a gala, as if she weren't digging her fingernails deep under a human scalp, "I understand that the necessary constraints of the work we do together can, at times, feel... stifling. And, more than that, the demands of the family are, I know, often challenging to meet, especially when trying to maintain healthy boundaries. After all, you can’t leave family behind at the office. But this is what we’re here for, dear; we’re here to coach each other, to cheer each other on as we learn and synergize and develop into something greater than our individual parts. And, Hieron, _you_ are integral to our performance here. You understand that, don't you? How _intrinsically valuable_ you are to our team?"

She picked up her hand. She would need to reschedule her meeting with HR; Hieron had ruined her manicure. She rounded her desk with brisk steps. Sat down, back straight, skirt smooth, not a hair out of place, discounting the damage to her nails. The clock by the door ticked softly and Min penciled a note into her datebook to have her assistant remove it. 

She glanced up at Hieron, pencil held suspended above her notes. They were still there, wide-eyed and pale, nose bleeding down their face and onto her desk. They really needed to get their little habit under control.

" _Hieron_? Did you hear me?" 

"Y-yes." 

"We want you here, Hieron, and we want to support your continued growth and success-- because your success is our success. But unfortunately that requires that we maintain the terms of your contract; they simply aren't up for renegotiation for another three years. If you still feel so strongly, I'm sure we can come to a mutually-satisfying arrangement at that time.”

"Y-yes. Yes, of course." 

"You can leave now." 

They stopped nodding at her and stumbled to their feet and out her door, leaving their blood smeared on her desk.


End file.
